The Maddening Model (Hazards, Inc.)

by Suzanne Simms

  “‘The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.’”

  Beside him, Sunday made an impatient sound. “Don’t tell me this man spent a year living with the monks, as well.”

  The Thai gentleman turned to her and responded, “Indeed, I did, gracious lady. It is our custom.”

  “Almost all Thai males spend at least part of their adolescence in a Buddhist monastery, taking vows of celibacy and poverty,” Simon explained. “Some decide it is their karma. They end up becoming monks. The rest return to the outside world.”

  “Do you all learn to speak in proverbs?”

  Simon ignored her.

  But the stranger answered, “Truth is truth.” Then he lifted his hands beseechingly, with the palms up, and continued pleading his case. “You must understand, sir, that I have a wife and five children to feed and clothe.”

  Simon put his hands together and interlaced his fingers. “You have many responsibilities.”

  “A great many responsibilities. So many that I cannot leave my family and journey to the north.”

  “It is a long journey, and the road leading up the mountains is difficult.”

  “Just a little while ago, you said the road up and the road down are one and the same,” interjected Sunday.

  Simon didn’t look at her, but he said through clenched teeth, “It has also been said that there are two days when a woman is a pleasure—the day one marries her and the day one buries her.”

  That had the desired effect. It shut Sunday up.

  “I regret that my station in life—I am but a lowly clerk—prevents me from giving it to you as a gift,” the man stated.

  Simon was very careful not to react.

  The Thai gentleman went on. “It is said that you were a stranger among us. Yet you learned to speak our language and understand our ways. You are no longer a farang.“

  “Thank you.”

  “You are a businessman.”

  “I am a businessman.”

  “Then you will not miss the few insubstantial baht that I must regrettably ask in exchange. It is worth a fortune to one who is enterprising.”

  He was enterprising, all right.

  “Only a few men see the world that can be theirs for the asking. You are one of these men, are you not, sir?”

  Simon inclined his head slightly. Flattery: a very old and useful tool in negotiations.

  The man stepped into the shade of a tree, dived into his pocket and brought out a small silk pouch. He carefully opened the top and withdrew a piece of paper which appeared to be old and yellowed.

  Simon was curious, in spite of himself. “What is it?”

  “It is a riddle. It is a map.”

  “Where will this map lead me?”

  “It will lead you to happiness and riches.”

  Simon didn’t move a muscle. “Could you be more specific?”

  “It will take you to the Hidden Buddha of the Heavenly Mist,” the map seller claimed.

  Simon allowed his skepticism to show. “I have not heard of this hidden Buddha.”

  An inscrutable smile surfaced on the man’s ageless features. “Then it is well named, is it not?”

  Simon was far from convinced. “Possibly.”

  Reassurance was immediately forthcoming. “All that I have said is true.”

  Simon rubbed his hand back and forth along his chin. “I will give you one hundred baht for the piece of paper.”

  The man appeared stunned. “But it is worth many times that, and I have a wife and six children to feed and clothe.”

  “I thought you said you had five children.”

  The man became animated. “There is my sister’s son who came to visit my home a year ago and now will not leave. I did not count him before.”

  “Two hundred baht.“

  “My eldest daughter is of marriageable age. I must be able to afford the temple offerings and the wedding feast.”

  “Three hundred.”

  Sunday opened her handbag and dug around for a moment. Simon assumed she was searching for another tissue. Instead, she brought out a fistful of money and said to the man, “I will give you one thousand baht for the map.”

  His eyes darted from Simon to Sunday and back again. “But...”

  Simon heaved a sigh of defeat and indicated his consent. “One thousand baht it is, then.”

  The small man handed over the map and accepted his money in exchange. He bowed several times and intoned, “May enlightenment be yours, most generous lady, and yours, sir.”

  Then he turned and quickly disappeared into the crowd.

  “You paid too much,” Simon told her.

  “That is a matter of opinion.”

  “The paper is worthless.”

  “Very probably.”

  He knew she was no fool. “Then why give the man a thousand baht for it?”

  “For the same reason you were going to give him three hundred,” Sunday answered.

  He sat and he waited.

  She went on to explain. “Maybe the man really does have a wife and five children to feed and clothe.”

  Simon crossed his arms and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Six. Don’t forget his sister’s son.”

  Sunday lifted the weight of her hair off her neck in a graceful motion that caught—and held—his attention. “Let’s look at what we got for one thousand baht, shall we?”

  He grunted. “Why not?”

  The scrap of paper was carefully unfolded and smoothed out flat on her lap. “It’s appears to be a map.” She pointed to the bottom of the page. “And these are some kind of symbols.”

  “The man said it was a map and a riddle.” Simon studied the crude drawing first. “I believe I recognize this area.” He indicated a serpentine line down the middle.

  Sunday’s red eyebrows, the same color as her hair, drew together. “What is it?”

  “The river Pai.”

  She raised her eyes to his; they really were the most incredible shade of green he’d ever seen. “And where is the river Pai?” she asked.

  He concentrated on his answer. “In the north.”

  “Anywhere near where we’re headed?”

  “Yes.”

  “How near?”

  He wouldn’t lie to her. He wasn’t sure he could. “Very near. Not far from Mae Hong Son.”

  She wrinkled up her forehead again. “Mae Hong Son?”

  “The City of Mist.”

  She gnawed on her lower lip. “That is amazing.”

  “Amazing,” he repeated, unable to keep the sardonic tone from his voice.

  Her chin came up. A faint color rose in her cheeks. Perhaps her skin had once been covered with freckles, but it was like peaches and cream now. “You sound a little...skeptical.”

  He was more than a little skeptical; he was a lot skeptical. “That’s because I am.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “What is?”

  Simon raised his eyes upward in a silent plea for patience. “We’re headed for the City of Mist. A stranger appears out of nowhere and offers to sell us a map that will lead to great riches. And, lo and behold, it just happens to be of the area around the City of Mist.” He unfolded his arms and pushed himself up straight on the bench. “The man must have heard us talking back at the Celestial Palace, Sunday, and then decided which of his many maps to try to sell us.” He gave a smirk. “Nice little racket he’s got going.”

  “You think the map is a fake.”

  “I know it’s a fake.”

  She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth. “I might agree with you, except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We never spoke of the City of Mist until after we’d left the bar. So how did the man know which map to offer us?”

  How was he supposed to know? Maybe it had been sheer dumb luck.

  If he was smart, Simon realized as he sat there, he would return the woman’s de
posit now and save them both a whole lot of aggravation.

  “I don’t know. And frankly I don’t care.” He got to his feet. “It’s time to escort you back to your hotel, Ms. Harrington. You’ll want to make an early night of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ll be making an even earlier morning of it tomorrow.”

  “How early?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  He could tell she wasn’t thrilled by the news.

  She folded the silk fan and returned it to her handbag, along with the map. “I assume—” she sniffed “—you mean I should request a six o’clock wake-up call.”

  “Nope.”

  Her head came up. “I have to be ready at six?”

  “Ready and waiting outside your hotel with the one suitcase you’re allowed to bring along.”

  That definitely got her attention. “One suitcase?”

  Simon realized he was almost enjoying himself. “And you’d better be able to carry it, yourself. There won’t be any porters handy where we’re going. By the way,” he asked as he hailed a passing samlor, “what hotel are you staying at?”

  “The Regent.”

  He should have known. “Only the best, huh?”

  “Only the best,” she said, as if she was measuring out her words.

  A half hour later, the taxicab pulled up in front of the most luxurious hotel in Bangkok. As she stepped from the small three-wheeled vehicle, it finally dawned on Simon where he had seen Sunday Harrington before. He snapped his fingers together. “Now I know.”

  She hesitated, and glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Now you know what?“

  “Where I’ve seen you before.” The details came to him. About seven years ago. Her likeness, purple bikini and all, had been splashed across every newspaper, television show and billboard, nationwide. Record sales had been set. For a week or two, there had been talk of little else. “The cover of Sports Illustrated, swimsuit edition.”

  “You have a good memory for faces,” Sunday said as she disappeared into the Regent.

  It wasn’t only her face that Simon remembered.

  Four

  The past had caught up with her.

  Sooner or later, it always did. She just hadn’t expected it to be here or now.

  She hadn’t expected it to be Simon Hazard.

  She refused to apologize, of course, for what she’d done, what she’d been. And she didn’t explain. There was no reason to. She’d had an incredibly successful career as a model, and for that she would always be thankful.

  But she was not a “babe,” and she was not a “bimbo.” She was not a body and a face without a brain. She was not a piece of meat. She was not a “loose woman.”

  She was a talented designer, a business owner and a mature woman of thirty. Yet, to most people—men, in particular—she would always be the girl in the sexy purple bikini.

  “That darn swimsuit is going to haunt me forever,” Sunday muttered under her breath as she crossed the lobby of the Regent and headed for the elevators.

  Simon Hazard was right about one thing: she had been an ugly duckling. Gangly, buck-toothed, freckled, self-conscious, awkward and uncoordinated—that described her perfectly at the age of fifteen.

  At sixteen, miraculously, she’d blossomed. As a result, she had signed a lucrative contract with the biggest modeling agency in New York. While everyone else in her high school class back in Cincinnati was worrying about what to wear to the prom, Sunday had been in Paris, modeling haute couture for the most expensive and prestigious French designers. She had gone full steam ahead from that day on, and she’d never looked back.

  Not once.

  From the beginning, she’d insisted on wearing only three colors: pink, purple or red. The look became her trademark, and was soon heralded as one of the cleverest marketing tools in the industry.

  At the age of twenty, she’d graced the covers of every major fashion publication from Elle to Vogue. She had been making the incredible sum of fifty thousand dollars a day.

  At twenty-two, she’d been chosen to appear on the cover of the annual swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Sunday and her tiny bikini would go down in history. It became the most talked-about and the bestselling edition of the magazine, ever. For a while, no matter where she turned, Sunday saw herself in those three ridiculously tiny triangles of purple spandex.

  She’d gone into modeling with her eyes wide open, but she hadn’t counted on the insatiable appetite of the paparazzi and the tabloid press. Any supermodel-cum-celebrity was considered fair game by one and all. Without her consent—even without her knowledge—her life became an open book. One reporter had tracked down some of her former classmates from high school. After all, inquiring minds had wanted to know.

  “Sunday Harrington? We called her The Giraffe.”

  “Sunday Harrington? Isn’t she dating some rock star now?”

  “Of course, I know Sunday Harrington. We’ve been the best of friends since the third grade,” declared a girl whose name Sunday didn’t even recall.

  “Sunday was in love with me for years. Probably still is,” claimed Brad Peterson, captain of the football team, whose glory days had ended with graduation.

  Enough was enough. At twenty-three she had retired.

  “So much for my fifteen minutes of fame,” Sunday said to herself as the elevator doors closed behind her.

  Out of sight, out of mind. That’s what she’d asked for and that’s what she’d gotten for five years. Although enough of the fickle public remembered her name, her face, her penchant for pink, purple and red for her to make the transition from ex-model to fashion designer two years ago after finally graduating from college.

  Only the most exclusive department stores carried Sunday’s upscale, expensive line of signature items. She did a little bit of everything from jewelry to belts, from scarves to handbags. All in pink, purple or red. All imprinted with her initials: a stylized, intertwining S and H.

  In fact, it was her fashion design business that had brought her to Thailand. She was going to look into doing something with silk for the first time, and where better to learn about silk than in the country where the textile industry had been revolutionized by another American. Before his mysterious disappearance over a quarter of a century ago, Jim Thompson had made Thai silk famous.

  When she opened the door of her suite, a welcome blast of cool air hit Sunday square in the face. She closed the door behind her, turned the lock and went straight through to the bedroom. Dropping her handbag onto the dressing table, she kicked off her sandals, slipped out of her silk shirt and pants and stretched out on top of the bed covers. She was hot and tired and hungry, but dinner could wait. A nap was at the top of her list.

  Sleep did not come easily; niggling thoughts did.

  What was she doing half a world away from home? And what was she doing about to head up into the rugged mountains of northern Thailand with a two-bit cowboy?

  But she knew the answers to her own questions. She was on the job. She was searching for inspiration and direction as a designer. Besides, Simon Hazard wasn’t really a two-bit cowboy. He was an enigma. He was certainly different from the men she usually met.

  Despite her age—her thirtieth birthday had been several months ago—and despite the reputation fostered in the gossip columns, Sunday’s experience with the male of the species was far more limited than anyone would guess.

  At first she’d been too young, too unattractive and too self-conscious. Then she’d been too famous and too well chaperoned. Plus, the men of her acquaintance seemed to be either married photographers on the make, or effeminate designers who weren’t.

  Now she was too successful.

  And too old.

  “You’re only as old as you feel,” Sunday muttered as she put her head down on the pillow. “Which, at the moment, is somewhere between ninety-five and one hundred.”

  For some time, she drifted between wakefulness and sleep. Ofte
n, her best ideas occurred to her when she was in that twilight state. This afternoon was no exception. Images came and went. Saffron-robed monks. The scent of exotic incense. Golden Buddhas and teak forests, mangoes and creamy coconut-milk sauces. Great carved elephants. Hot and sour, sweet and salty foods. Classical Thai dancers with their elaborate headdresses, bare feet and long nails. Wind chimes and tinkling bells and brass cymbals. Golden spires and mirrored pagodas. Bamboo. Brown rivers. Black panthers.

  Sights, sounds, smells, impressions sifted through Sunday’s mind. And somewhere in the middle of it all, she found what she was looking for. She would design a whole collection in silk. The colors would be the colors of Thailand: brown, green and, of course, saffron. She would call the collection Siam.

  * * *

  The past had finally caught up with him.

  Sooner or later, he’d known it would. He just hadn’t expected it to be here and now.

  He hadn’t expected it to be Simon Hazard.

  Somebody back at headquarters had made a botch of it. He’d only been informed a month ago that another Hazard—Jonathan was just one of many, it seemed—was in Thailand. Since then, he’d been doing his homework on the man.

  What he had found out about Simon Hazard didn’t make any sense. The bloke was a millionaire. He had his own company, his own penthouse apartment, even his own tropical island. Why would a man like that be in Thailand driving a bunch of bloody tourists around in a beat-up Range Rover?

  Unless Simon Hazard was here to settle an old debt.

  He took a last puff on his unfiltered cigarette, removed it from the carved ivory holder—it had been purchased at a night market long before it had become politically incorrect and illegal to buy ivory—and disposed of the butt in the ashtray at his elbow.

  Now there seemed to be a woman involved, some kind of fashion model or designer.

  He had briefly entertained the notion that Sunday Harrington might be in the “business.” After all, she did a great deal of traveling, and she had the perfect cover. There was just one flaw in his theory: she was too conspicuous. In fact, with her height, her hair, her eyes, she stuck out like a sore thumb.

  He permitted himself a small sigh. This could get messy. There were too many people involved. There was too great a chance of exposure. The whole thing made him damnably nervous.